Short answer. The offender is still liable for a special complex crime. Article 297 of the Revised Penal Code punishes attempted or frustrated robbery with homicide by reclusion temporal in its maximum period to reclusion perpetua, unless the killing itself deserves a higher penalty. The robbery need never have been completed.
What the law says
When by reason or on occasion of an attempted or frustrated robbery a homicide is committed the person guilty of such offenses shall be punished by reclusion temporal in its maximum period to reclusion perpetua, unless the homicide committed shall deserve a higher penalty under the provisions of this Code.
Revised Penal Code, Article 297 — Attempted Or Frustrated Robbery With Homicide. Read the full provision →
Failing to take the property changes nothing
It is a common assumption that if nothing was taken, there was no robbery and therefore only a killing to answer for. Article 297 closes that gap. Once the offender has begun the robbery — entering to take property, pointing a weapon and demanding it — and a death results by reason of or on the occasion of that attempt, the law treats the two as a single indivisible offence. The penalty range is heavy precisely because the risk of death is what makes armed robbery intolerable, whether or not the thief walks away with anything.
“By reason or on occasion of” is deliberately wide
The death does not have to be the point of the exercise, and it does not have to be the victim of the robbery. Killings of a bystander, of a responding officer, or of a companion in the course of the incident have all been treated as falling within this kind of provision, so long as the death is connected to the robbery rather than merely coincidental in time.
It also does not matter that the killing was unplanned. The connection to the robbery, not the intent to kill, supplies the link, which is why participants who never touched a weapon can find themselves inside the same charge.
Who is covered, and where it stops
All those who took part in the robbery are generally answerable for the death that occurred in its course, unless it is shown that a participant tried to prevent the killing. That is a stringent standard, and simple absence from the room is not enough. Anyone facing this charge needs counsel immediately, because the sentencing exposure is the difference between a term of years and life imprisonment.
The article also has a ceiling clause: if the killing deserves a higher penalty elsewhere in the Code — where it amounts to murder because of treachery or another qualifying circumstance — that heavier penalty applies instead. The provision sets a floor for the offence; it does not cap what a particularly cruel killing attracts.